


with my teeth in your heart

by heyitsathrowaway



Series: how does it feel [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Knifeplay, M/M, by not having a good HR department that's how!, hey so practically speaking how do you get a perfectly x shaped scar on the middle of your face?, kind? of?, there's knives and no one fucks and it's A Bad Scene so.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 00:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18216008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyitsathrowaway/pseuds/heyitsathrowaway
Summary: If Xemnas pulled a knife on him and spoke of proving hisloyaltyin calm, even tones, Axel would probably burn him from the inside out. Or he’d try, and be annihilated for his trouble. He wouldn’t nod, and fold to his knees, and work to keep his palms flat against his thighs, no matter how much he wanted to twitch.





	with my teeth in your heart

**Author's Note:**

> danny suggested this scenario to me and i will NEVER forgive them
> 
> title from How Does It Feel by MS MR. Also Medea but the song is probably more relevant here!

“Kneel.” 

Saïx kneels. Axel would fight; Axel would snarl; Axel would laugh to see him now. Perhaps that’s why they don’t talk much anymore. Axel insists he’ll do whatever it takes to reach their goals, but there was never any question that Saïx would be the one to worm his way into Xemnas’s good graces. 

If Xemnas pulled a knife on him and spoke of proving his _loyalty_ in calm, even tones, Axel would probably burn him from the inside out. Or he’d try, and be annihilated for his trouble. He wouldn’t nod, and fold to his knees, and work to keep his palms flat against his thighs, no matter how much he wanted to twitch.

Xemnas runs his fingers up Saïx’s throat and takes him by the chin, and Saïx has to swallow so that he doesn’t jerk away. He will do many things, but he will not let Xemnas see him flinch from this. That’s why he’s here, after all: to show Xemnas that he is earnest, and loyal, and anything but weak. 

He has no heart, so Saïx feels nothing when Xemnas tilts his head up, inspecting Saïx’s face with an unreadable gaze. “You’re sure?”

“I’m willing to earn your trust,” Saïx says, his voice cool to his own ears. It’s useful, having no heart to betray him. That was always how Lea caught him in a lie. 

Xemnas is not the sort of man who asks a question twice. “You can close your eyes,” he tells him, and it is not a kindness. 

Saïx says nothing, and Xemnas’s lip curls in what could be either approval or amusement. Saïx will need to learn these distinctions in time. For now, he focuses on keeping his breathing steady. 

Xemnas starts above his right eye. Saïx doesn’t jerk back. He is as still as stone, but Xemnas tightens his grip on his chin regardless. There will be bruises in addition to the scar.

It hurts, of course, as steady as Xemnas’s hand is. Steady and achingly slow as the blade moves from Saïx’s nose to his cheek, dragging fire in its wake. Saïx’s nails dig into his knees. His jaw clenches. But he does not close his eyes, and he does not tremble. Xemnas’s lip curls further. Saïx can’t meet his eyes, so he keeps his gaze focused there, on his parody of a smile.

It’s only his face, and Saïx is not a vain man. This should be nothing. He already let Xemnas name him; they all did. This is just a mark of a different kind.

He wouldn’t mind so much, if he could stop thinking about what Axel will say when he sees him next. Saïx knows that he won’t understand. He and Axel seem incapable of understanding each other anymore.

“Good,” says Xemnas. He pulls the knife back. Saïx can see his own blood slide down the length of the blade, until Xemnas turns his face away by the chin, leaving Saïx to blink at the bare walls of his own bedroom. He thinks Xemnas is inspecting his handiwork.

This time, Xemnas grabs him by the jaw, his thumb digging into the point of Saïx’s cheekbone, his gloved palm pressed against his mouth. It forces Saïx’s head back further. Xemnas could easily cut his throat like this if he wanted. But no: what he wants is to make it clear that Saïx is his, body and soul.

He starts below Saïx’s right eye. The second stroke is worse by far. It shouldn’t be: Saïx is braced for it now, for exactly how much it will hurt. But his nails can’t dig any deeper into his skin and his jaw is already tight. So he can’t stop the way his breath hitches, the way it begins to come too fast, the way that his eyes widen. He has no heart, he has no pulse, but something in him won’t calm.

He’s called Lea a crybaby hundreds of times. He will not cry. There’s no need. Axel has his good luck charms, and Saïx has his blood, already beginning to slide down his left cheek.

Xemnas releases his jaw at the same moment the knife leaves Saïx’s skin. Saïx gasps and sways forward, control slipping away from him. He snaps his mouth shut. The absence of pain should not be any more shocking than its presence. 

There’s blood dripping down his forehead. Xemnas leans in close, and Saïx can’t stop himself now: he flinches away, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Xemnas laughs at him, and wipes the blood from his forehead and his eyelids with his thumb, as if that will do anything but smear it. Saïx’s nose and cheeks must still be covered in it. Xemnas’s fingers linger on his cheek, the leather cool against his skin. “Wait at least a day before you heal yourself,” Xemnas tells him, as slow and ponderous as ever. Like nothing of import just transpired. “Otherwise, we’ll have to do this again.”

Saïx doesn’t trust himself to speak. He nods. When he opens his eyes, Xemnas is stripping off his gloves, now tacky with blood. He leaves them on the nightstand. They’re going to stain. If Axel was here, he’d make a joke about the impracticality of white furniture, and Saïx would have to remind himself not to give in to the luxury of laughing at it.

No. If Axel was here, he would have something else to say. 

“Sit,” Xemnas says, tilting his head towards the bed. Saïx stands, and staggers once he’s upright, his head swimming. There’s black creeping in at the edges of his vision. It’s nothing like the times when he loses himself in battle, when his vision goes white. This feels almost like it did to die, like having his heart clawed away from his body. Like being separated from himself.

He sucks in a breath, and manages to sit down on the edge of his bed without incident. He will not let Xemnas see him fall.

Xemnas hasn’t looked up from where he’s sorting through the nightstand drawer. Saïx keeps his room neat; it’s nothing like the mess that Axel’s is. In the early days of the Organization—the very early days—whenever they ended up here, cleaning each other up after a mission, Axel always made a point to comment on it. Asking when Saïx was going to decorate. 

He stopped, eventually, once Saïx snapped at him that they weren’t here on _vacation_. 

“Yeah,” Axel said. “Guess not.” And he finished wrapping Saïx’s ribs and left without saying another word. After that, Axel licked his wounds alone, and left Saïx to do the same. 

The bandages and gauze and disinfectant are all in the same place now. Axel can’t cast a decent cure to save his life. It only made sense to keep them on hand.

“You and Axel are close,” Xemnas says. For a disorienting moment, Saïx can’t tell whether he spoke his own thoughts aloud, whether Xemnas can somehow read his mind. He shakes his head. He’s not sure whether it’s a denial or an attempt to clear it. Regardless, Xemnas takes him by the chin again, his grip much gentler now. Saïx stills.

“We knew each other in our old life,” Saïx says. Xemnas wipes away the blood on his face with a cloth, movements careful and precise. 

“I’m aware.” Saïx almost wishes that Xemnas would hold him still again, once he begins to clean the blood from the cuts. It hurts in a dull, pulsing way. Not unlike the old familiar pain of having a heart. “I hope that it’s clear now that your ties to the past will have to be severed.” Xemnas tilts Saïx’s face up with one finger under his chin. Saïx has no idea what Xemnas sees in his eyes, but it seems to satisfy him. 

_Yeah_ , Axel would say. _Yeah, I think you’ve made it pretty fucking clear!_

“I understand,” Saïx says. He wishes Axel were here, to say the things he cannot; he wishes Axel were here to chatter incessantly about nothing the way he always used to, when he patched up Saïx’s wounds.

Xemnas was once a scientist; it’s obvious in the clinical way he pours the disinfectant, in his studied movements as he dabs it across the cuts, in the way he watches Saïx avidly as he does it. As though there is anything to be learned from the way Saïx can’t stop himself from gasping, or in the way he blinks, over and over, his eyes wet with unshed tears. Xemnas cradles his cheek in his bare hand, and more than Saïx’s face begins to ache. He has no heart, so that can’t be what hurts.

“I hope you do,” is all Xemnas says. Saïx’s vision has gone blurry, so he has no idea what kind of expression is on his face. He bandages Saïx quickly, probably much more skillfully than Axel ever could. Saïx keeps his eyes open, looking at nothing in particular. 

He expects—something, when Xemnas is done. He doesn’t know what. Not a smile, or a nod, or any sort of expression of approval—Saïx is no fool. But he gets only Xemnas’s cool regard, there and then gone, as he opens a corridor to darkness and steps through.

Saïx draws up one knee, and touches the bandages on his cheek with shaking fingers.

There is a burn scar on the back of Saïx’s calf. Lea gave it to him, years ago now. A stupid accident from when they were children. Isa told Lea over and over that it didn’t matter. That he didn’t care. 

It was always a lie. The truth was that Isa did care: the scar served as a reminder of their connection. Of the things that wouldn’t fade. He treasured it. 

Saïx doesn’t need to see his own face now to know that these scars won’t fade, either.


End file.
